If Greg Norman, Nick Price, Tom Lehman, Vijay Singh and Nick Faldo want to forget the 1998 US Masters in a hurry, after the five (pound sign) £3 million-plus rated players missed the cut in Augusta, they should spare a thought for last week's overall leader, Niamh Daly.
Our Kells, Co Meath, manager shot to first overall in week five after finishing joint third on the weekly leaderboard. This week? Well, just to prove a week is a VERY long time in the life of a Golf Masters' manager, Niamh came 16,689th on the weekly list and has fallen to 81st overall.
Not that Niamh would have expected a big return from her Brassee team at Augusta, seeing as she had only two representatives in the field - but she would have hoped for better performances from Lee Westwood and Billy Mayfair, who won her just £12,000.
James Carr, of Balbriggan, Co Dublin, had only three players in action at the Masters and they had won just £83,000 between them in the first five weeks of the competition. Hardly encouraging. The names of these three strugglers? Mark O'Meara, Fred Couples and Paul Azinger. Their combined winnings in Augusta? £460,000. So, that slight improvement in form by the trio wins James a fourball in Mount Juliet.
And a fourball is precisely what Kevin Barry was hoping his aptly named Augusta Special team would win him at the weekend. They fell just under £200,000 short, finishing 251st on the weekly leaderboard, but the efforts of Azinger, Justin Leonard, Mark Calcavecchia and John Huston (Mayfair and Tom Watson missed the cut) were enough to move our Dun Laoghaire manager from 19th to first overall.
"To be honest I only picked that team to try and win the weekly prize. They surprised me when they got off to a good start in the competition and kept it going. I DID expect a big week from them at the Masters, but certainly didn't expect to see them top of the overall leaderboard," said Kevin, who got as high as 12th overall during last year's competition but is hoping to beat his previous best finish of 89th.
Kevin is one of only 20 managers to retain their top 50 placing after the Masters, with another 29 experiencing just as miserable a weekend as Niamh Daly. Brian Buttimer's Furyk Furies move up from 10th to second, with Peter Maher's Masters 4 re-entering the top 50 at number three. Tom Walsh, of Midleton, Co Cork, leaps from 48th to fourth, while former leader Denis Barror, who dropped off the leaderboard last week, returns in fifth place.
Just under two per cent of our teams benefited from O'Meara's Masters' win, with three managers transferring him in to their line-ups last week - Ray Flanagan of Sligo was one but the identity of the other two is a mystery because neither left a name. One brought O'Meara in to two teams - The Yips and The Dream Team - and the other hired him for Biddle Cookie.
Fred Couples, joint second in the Masters, was sacked by eight unfortunate managers last week (and hired by none) and David Duval, who tied with Couples, was off-loaded by 10 managers and only brought in by Paul Glacken of Kilmainham in Dublin.
It will come as a mighty relief to those managers who have more European Tour players in their teams than Americans to see that there is Golf Masters action on this side of the Atlantic in week seven. Jim Hargadon of Terenure in Dublin will be particularly pleased to know that his employees Padraig Harrington, Paul McGinley and Raymond Burns are in the field for the Cannes Open - he also has Darren Clarke in action at the MCI Classic in South Carolina.
Jim wrote to us to ask for a green polo shirt, as reward for picking a "patriotic, All-Irish" line-up, christened The Celtic Tigers. Jim? This Buy-Irish policy is very admirable indeed, but have a look at your current overall position . . . 16,818th. Time to invest in a few foreigners, we think. We'll send you one of our polo shirts - unfortunately they're white, but your local haberdashery should stock bottles of green dye.
